News
Auschwitz Museum and North Rhine-Westphalia Work Together to Save Documents
At a ceremony in the Preservation Workshops on Sunday, July 1, Director Piotr M. A. Cywiński, representing the Museum, and Premier Jürgen Rütgers, representing the German Federal Land of North Rhine-Westphalia, signed the contract for the conservation of Auschwitz SS-Hygiene Institute records from the Museum Archives.
The Institute carried out bacteriological tests on Auschwitz prisoners, and some of the records therefore contain personal information. “These people are no longer with us. Their children and grandchildren are also passing away. All that is left of them is yellowing pages from the SS archives. Nothing more. That is why we cannot allow anything bad to happen to these pages,” Museum Director Piotr M. A. Cywiński said while signing the contract.
Jürgen Rütgers agreed, saying that “it is our duty to preserve these documents and to make sure that they remain an eternal proof of the legacy of Auschwitz for us and our children: the industrial murder of millions, the betrayal of the ideals of the Enlightenment, the denial of human dignity.”
The preservation of the documents will be carried out jointly by Polish and German specialists from 2008 to 2011, and will make it possible to conserve all 39 thousand items in the document collection. The records being preserved cover the period from April 10, 1943 to January 12, 1945. The German side will cover the cost of the whole project, estimated at 2 million zloty.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, the premier and ministers of the government of North Rhine-Westphalia received commemorative medals struck on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Museum. Director Cywiński remarked that “today we are beginning the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Memorial. I am happy that we are beginning in precisely this way, by preserving documents from the past for future generations of researchers. For our children and grandchildren.”
